Ricoh and Oblon Provide Training to 300 Patent Examiners

Ricoh Company, LTD and Ricoh Americas Corporation (jointly “Ricoh”), in conjunction with Oblon, provided Patent Examiners of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) with training on Ricoh’s revolutionary spherical camera, RICOH THETA, on December 2, 2014.

RICOH THETA is the world’s first mass-produced consumer imaging device that encapsulates fully spherical scenes with one shot. It features a proprietary ultra-small twin-lens folded optical system that captures the scene around, above and below the device in one shot for unprecedented, fully spherical images. Fitting easily in a pocket or the palm of a hand, the slim, lightweight (95-gram) RICOH THETA is a go-anywhere device suited for use in to confined spaces, the great outdoors and everywhere in between.

At the Patent Examiner Technical Training Program (“PETTP”), Ricoh and Oblon educated nearly 300 patent examiners on the use, features, and technical workings of RICOH THETA. On the technical side, the Patent Examiners were educated on (1) the processing performed by RICOH THETA to stitch together two captured 180 degree images to obtain a single seamless spherical image, (2) the RICOH THETA’s structural arrangement, including its sensors, lens, and mirror which provides a very compact design, (3) the construction of the RICOH THETA’s ultra-wide angle lens which allows for a very compact design and high quality images, and (4) the image processing techniques utilized by RICOH THETA’s image viewer to allow for smooth zooming and scrolling of the spherical image.

Kaoru Ikeya and Tomoko Nakamura of Ricoh, and Jim Kulbaski and Noah Flaks of Oblon provided the training to the patent examiners.